Split|Screen: The Elder Scrolls Online

The Elder Scrolls has always been an isolated, single-player experience. Now, Zenimax Game Studios hopes to preserves what's great about the series but bring it to an online game environment in The Elder Scrolls Online.

Video game consoles update, graphics improve, franchises fade, and studios shutter. But Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls has been a rare constant. Every release is like an exclamation point that punctuates the long sentence of fantasy gaming and creates an inspired enthusiasm for the genre. It's also a series rich in history. The Elder Scrolls library stretches back two decades, and the history of Tamriel, Bethesda's proprietary fantasy world, spans millennia.

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Game director Matt Firor's challenge was to continue this pedigree of success and transform Elder Scrolls from an isolated experience to an open one with The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). The very idea of an online Elder Scrolls game can seem contradictory as Bethesda's franchise has always shared an isolationist attitude. Players were exceptional individuals among commoners with the power the shape the destiny of Tamriel. Empowered avatars traversed vast terrain in a lonely pursuit toward a destiny of the player's choosing. With the introduction of world crammed with other super-powered individuals, would Elder Scrolls lose its explorative and isolated experience that made it so popular in the first place? Or could Zenimax create a world that was more immersive and convincing that anything that had come before?

The Story

In 2007 Zenimax Media hired Firor to create ESO. As of its release last Friday, the game took almost seven years to make, in part because the team had to start from scratch. "When we started in 2007, we had a couple of years of getting technology together, building a team, so it wasn't an immediate dive into game development," Firor says. "We worked on some prototypes and then the real hard work on developing the game began in 2009." In its early development, ESO overlapped another Elder Scrolls game, the series' fifth installment named Skyrim. Firor mentions that the Zenimax team was kept in the loop on Skyrim's progress, specifically the game's lore.

ESO takes place 1000 years before the events of Skyrim and 750 years before Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion. This 400-year expanse is known as the Second Era in the Elder Scrolls canon, and Firor's choice for this time period wasn't arbitrary. "We wanted a time when there was no central authority in Tamriel, where there was chaos and constant war, one province wasn't dominating another, no empire," Firor says. "That dictated a few different options of where we could go, but we wanted it to be close enough so we could have all the same races and towns."

With the temporal setting in place, Zenimax's next challenge was preserving Elder Scrolls artistic style. The technical requirements to render beautiful expansive landscapes in high resolution but also handle the demands of an unpredictable online environment meant the team had to make a few concessions. "We had to make the art look and feel like it does like in Elder Scrolls games, but we had to make it so hundreds of other figures could be on the screen at the same time," Firor says. "In PvP, if everyone wants to go to one place and stand there at the same time, the game has to be able to allow that...we wanted to make sure those kind of activities could be supported, which means we had to back off on the polygon count for the models and make sure things scale well." The final result would be a Tamriel not as visually lush as Skyrim but a world that's still familiar. With the adoption of similar fonts, convenient waypoints, and a surprisingly minimal display (compass up top, hot keys on the bottom and a small mission window to the right), the game feels unmistakably Elder Scrolls.

On May 4, 2012, Zenimax released its announcement trailer, a simple one-minute long clip with ominous voice acting by Michael Gambon (you know, Dumbledore) and an extreme close up of the game's own sigil, an Ouroborus with three dragons devouring their own tails. At the time, the image seemed cool and eye-catching and maybe a nod to the story—a world in constant struggle—but the icon also mirrored Zenimax's own experiences with development, which will continue well past the game's release (already unveiling its first post-launch content), as well as its seemingly endless amount of gameplay. "In many ways, we don't have a max level," Firor says. "When you get to the top numeric level, which is 50, you've only gone through about a third of the game's content just for solo play. That doesn't count dungeons or PvP."

As Firor reiterates, the Elder Scrolls has never been about endings, it's about presenting a world to the player, a fantasy-filled sandbox that allows you to do whatever or go wherever you want. The only difference is now you get to explore with friends. "[ESO] is not designed to race to the end because you'll miss important things you'll want to do along the way," Firor says. "The joy of an Elder Scrolls game is in the journey."

To try to whittle Elder Scrolls Online down into a comprehensive review would be a lesson in futility. Instead, this serves as just an introduction and initial thoughts on my first ten hours with ESO as someone well-versed in the Elder Scrolls series. I haven't scoured every inch of Tamriel, but after playing a couple dozen missions, the game's many strengths and occasional weaknesses become apparent.

Elder Scrolls is known for a lot of things—expansive worlds, never-ending gameplay, and complete openness—but it all starts with the character creator. Pick from the familiar stable of races in the Elder Scrolls universe, including the cat-like Khajiit, the reptilian Argonian, three different elf classes, and a collection of human-based classes as well. Next, you must choose your character's faction. Certain races belong to certain factions (unless you bought the Imperial) pack and your choice will affect how you play ESO's player-versus-player system, so if you want to battle with friends, choose carefully. Then you select your class, which as opposed to the rest of the character creator is a little more limited and offers four choices: Dragon Knight (Fighter), Sorcerer (Magic), Nightblade (Rogue), and Templar (Healer). Of course there's a lot of wiggle room within these four classes allowing you to customize skills and abilities. After that, select the perfect concoction of attributes like hair color, cheekbone width, and gut size, etc., and enter Tamriel.

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ESO offers up a pretty simple tutorial and then pretty much gets out of the way, letting you explore wherever you please. You wake up, like in other Elder Scrolls games, a prisoner. Lyris Titanborn, voiced by the talented Jennifer Hale, leads you out of your hellish incarceration. With the help of the Prophet, you're whisked away to Tamriel, where the real story begins.

The controls are your standard WASD setup and the game's user interface is designed to show players what keys open what windows. The solo mission is a familiar and expected concept, you've been marked to perform great deeds though you've yet to reach your full potential. Before beginning your quest, the Prophet interjects that there are other "heroes" you'll encounter along your path that can assist you. Here's how ESO introduces its massive-multiplayer-online element. Like most MMORPGs, ESO lets players battle against one another in PvP or fight against the game itself in PvE (player-versus-environment). After a player reaches level 10, they're able to participate in PvP where three factions battle for the throne in Cyrodiil and experience gained in PvP transfers over the PvE as well. PvP represents some of the hardest gaming that ESOhas to offer, but your power and abilities are scaled up so that you're at least competitive against more experienced avatars instead of being just a lamb to the slaughter.

The leveling system takes cues from Elder Scrolls titles but adds its own twists. As in Oblivion and Skyrim, individuals skills level up depending on how much you use them. For example, my Khajiit Nightblade is outfitted with medium armor and a bow. As I crash through the main quest or complete other side missions, I gain general experience toward leveling and also my skills in medium armor, bows, and other hot key abilities (such as siphoning) increase as well. Once I level (or find three skyshards), I'm able to spend attribute points to increase my magic, stamina, or health, and skill points to improve my class skills, bump up racial bonuses, or improve my ability with weapons. The more weapon-focused you are the more abilities open up to you, so while you can pursue any weapon you'd like, it's best to know what kind of character you want to play early on.

ESO is easily one of best-looking MMORPGs I've ever played. The interface is stripped down and clean. Firor mentions that from early on they wanted to encourage gamers to play within the world, not in the UI. Below you character are a number of hot keys set to your character's special abilities. Up top is a user-friendly compass to help guide you to certain quests. With pop-down instructions appearing when you center an icon, navigating Tamriel has never been easier. In the upper right corner is a small mission description, which can easily be cycled through without having to toggle to the mission screen, and on the lower left shows chat interaction and server-wide announcements. For the most part, these are all usual trapping of your common MMORPG, but ESO improved upon them.

For all of Zenimax's hard work to create an online role-playing game that remains faithful to its source material, it fails in a few unavoidable places. The shortcomings of ESO don't stem from the game but rather from the genre it's forced to inhabit. For example, my Khajiit character is a rogue. He's able to attack from a distance, sneak up behind unsuspecting victims, and disappear as if he was never there. In one particular dungeon, I was sneaking around a corner and caught a goblin dead to rights. I pulled back my bow ready to loose an arrow only for an unseen Orc barreling out of nowhere, a PC eager to complete the same mission I was on, cut down my foe with a single swipe. It's moments like these that make it painfully aware that Elder Scrolls, for all its amazing steps toward role-playing and world-building, doesn't belong online. These moments can take players out of the experience, and at least for me, it made me feel like my character's sneaking abilities were more of handicap than a roleplaying choice. Zenimax was smart to at least keep the main quest a completely solo experience, allowing for players to dungeon delve on their own, but like most Elder Scrolls titles, the main campaign is only a mere fraction of the game's total content. Ultimately, these are the decisions you make when you sign up for an MMORPG, but to have it forced upon the open and free Elder Scrolls system was unfortunate.

Bottom Line: Buy It (Maybe)

Whether or not you purchase ESO requires a little more soul searching that your average video game. Is the game initially worth its $60 price? No doubt. The amount of gameplay here is almost staggering, and you definitely feel like you got your money's worth. However, ESO comes saddled with a $15 monthly subscription fee, and depending on your gaming appetite, that could change your mind. If you're not ready to sink a considerable amount of time into your character and exploring Tamriel, the monthly monetary agreement may not be worth it.

If you're a role player like me, the games in-depth character building and rich storytelling is more than enough to get you hooked—if you don't mind the occasional orc barreling through a few of your missions. Overall, Zenimax was able to preserve the DNA of Elder Scrolls and transplant it into a completely new gaming environment. If you like the isolation of past titles and have no desire for PvP interaction, you might want to avoid this one altogether, as for me—I've got some leveling to do.